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Authors: Alejo Carpentier
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there
—the seaport of Basilia still continued to exist and carry on its Rhenish occupations of the year 1000, and the Seine with its
bâteau-mouches
was still cut up by the changeless cross-bars of the Pont Neuf with its booths and pseudo-renaissance tabarins; while here and now, jungle scrambled over jungle, estuaries twisted and turned, rivers changed course and left their beds between night and morning, so that twenty towns built in a single day out of anything from plastered dung to marble, from pigsties to castles, from gaucho guitar music to the voice of Enrico Caruso, suddenly fell into ruins, disreputable and abandoned, until even the saltpetre had ceased being of interest to the world, even the seabirds’ excrement—the guano, such as covers the rocks with milky slime—was no longer quoted on the Stock Exchange, with shouting and scribbling on slates, bidding and overbidding, now that its place had been taken by some chemical substance manufactured in German test tubes. As I filled my lungs with the breath of my native air,I became more and more a president.) And I really was the President, standing erect and stiff on the platform of the train, my expression hard, whip in hand, my attitude grim, when we arrived at the capital through the familiar landscape of the suburbs; here was the soap factory, the sawmill, the powerhouse; on the right, the rambling country house with caryatids and telamons, and its ruined mosaic-covered minaret; on the left, the huge advertisement for Scott’s Emulsion and the other for Pompeian Lotion. Sloan’s Liniment, useful for everything; Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Mixture—a portrait with bare throat and cameos—sovereign cure for all menstrual disorders. And above all—above all—Aunt Jemima’s Flour—be sure to remember the brand—a universal favourite in suburbs, tenements, and smallholdings because the label had on it the figure of a negress from the south, with a checked handkerchief on her head such as is worn by the people of the lowlands hereabouts. (“She’s almost exactly like the grandmother of that Prussian, Hoffmann,” people used to say jokingly, remembering that the old woman had been relegated to the furthest outbuildings of his house, and was never present at the Colonel’s dinners and parties; she was seen in the street only when going to six o’clock communion, or she would take to haggling at the top of her voice over the price of marjoram or lettuce at the stalls of market gardeners, who used to drive their heavily burdened donkeys from the surrounding mountains in the early mornings, before the daily awakening in sunlight of the Tutelary Volcano.)
Railway lines crossing, signals rushing to meet us, and at two o’clock in the morning we entered the deserted station of the Great Eastern Railway, all made of iron and frosted glass—much of it broken—built some time ago by the Frenchman Baltard. The United States military attaché was waitingfor us on the platform, along with members of the Cabinet. And in several motor cars we crossed the silent town, as silent as if uninhabited, because of the curfew, which had been put forward from eight o’clock in the evening to six, and (starting today) to half past four. Grey, ochre and yellow houses with doors and windows closed and rusty pipes spouting water from their roofs slept on raised sidewalks. The equestrian statue of the Founder of the Nation loomed in melancholy solitude, in spite of the presence of the bronze heroes standing beneath him in the Plaza Municipal. The Grand Theatre, with its classical columns, looked like some sumptuous cenotaph in the absence of any human figures. All the lights of the Government Palace were lit, in honour of the Extraordinary Council, which had lasted ever since breakfast time. And at ten o’clock, in response to a very sensational special edition of the morning newspaper, an enormous crowd had assembled in front of the façade of tiles and volcanic stone built
—the seaport of Basilia still continued to exist and carry on its Rhenish occupations of the year 1000, and the Seine with its
bâteau-mouches
was still cut up by the changeless cross-bars of the Pont Neuf with its booths and pseudo-renaissance tabarins; while here and now, jungle scrambled over jungle, estuaries twisted and turned, rivers changed course and left their beds between night and morning, so that twenty towns built in a single day out of anything from plastered dung to marble, from pigsties to castles, from gaucho guitar music to the voice of Enrico Caruso, suddenly fell into ruins, disreputable and abandoned, until even the saltpetre had ceased being of interest to the world, even the seabirds’ excrement—the guano, such as covers the rocks with milky slime—was no longer quoted on the Stock Exchange, with shouting and scribbling on slates, bidding and overbidding, now that its place had been taken by some chemical substance manufactured in German test tubes. As I filled my lungs with the breath of my native air,I became more and more a president.) And I really was the President, standing erect and stiff on the platform of the train, my expression hard, whip in hand, my attitude grim, when we arrived at the capital through the familiar landscape of the suburbs; here was the soap factory, the sawmill, the powerhouse; on the right, the rambling country house with caryatids and telamons, and its ruined mosaic-covered minaret; on the left, the huge advertisement for Scott’s Emulsion and the other for Pompeian Lotion. Sloan’s Liniment, useful for everything; Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Mixture—a portrait with bare throat and cameos—sovereign cure for all menstrual disorders. And above all—above all—Aunt Jemima’s Flour—be sure to remember the brand—a universal favourite in suburbs, tenements, and smallholdings because the label had on it the figure of a negress from the south, with a checked handkerchief on her head such as is worn by the people of the lowlands hereabouts. (“She’s almost exactly like the grandmother of that Prussian, Hoffmann,” people used to say jokingly, remembering that the old woman had been relegated to the furthest outbuildings of his house, and was never present at the Colonel’s dinners and parties; she was seen in the street only when going to six o’clock communion, or she would take to haggling at the top of her voice over the price of marjoram or lettuce at the stalls of market gardeners, who used to drive their heavily burdened donkeys from the surrounding mountains in the early mornings, before the daily awakening in sunlight of the Tutelary Volcano.)
Railway lines crossing, signals rushing to meet us, and at two o’clock in the morning we entered the deserted station of the Great Eastern Railway, all made of iron and frosted glass—much of it broken—built some time ago by the Frenchman Baltard. The United States military attaché was waitingfor us on the platform, along with members of the Cabinet. And in several motor cars we crossed the silent town, as silent as if uninhabited, because of the curfew, which had been put forward from eight o’clock in the evening to six, and (starting today) to half past four. Grey, ochre and yellow houses with doors and windows closed and rusty pipes spouting water from their roofs slept on raised sidewalks. The equestrian statue of the Founder of the Nation loomed in melancholy solitude, in spite of the presence of the bronze heroes standing beneath him in the Plaza Municipal. The Grand Theatre, with its classical columns, looked like some sumptuous cenotaph in the absence of any human figures. All the lights of the Government Palace were lit, in honour of the Extraordinary Council, which had lasted ever since breakfast time. And at ten o’clock, in response to a very sensational special edition of the morning newspaper, an enormous crowd had assembled in front of the façade of tiles and volcanic stone built
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